Python Scripting

I’ve been familiar with Python for about 4 years. In oceanography, most researchers have to create their own sensors because it’s the most cost-effective way to gather data while maintaining within their limited government grants. Plus, this allows the researcher to understand how their data is gathered, the limitations or quality of such data, and how to clean up the data to be presentable to the public.

The great news about ESRI’s ArcGIS products is that they are Python compatible. If you have access to the ArcPy module by purchasing one of ESRI’s products, then you can create a script to run tools.

Below is an example of how the peregrine falcon habitat was determined from a digital elevation model (DEM) through command prompts. The scenario is that peregrine falcon habitats are on steep cliffs that are greater than 40 degrees and 160 feet above the mean elevation of the raster.

A - DEM utilized. B - Suitable habitats in purple. C - Site selection code in the Python window within ArcGIS Pro.

The IDEs that I use are Spyder and PyCharm through Anaconda. In the above example, I used command prompts in the Python window within ArcGIS Pro.

The modules I am intimately familiar with are math, matplotlib, Pandas, ArcPy, and PySimpleGUI.

Aside from a GIS context, I have utilized Python to create figures for my own projects. Below is a CTD profile of chlorophyll concentrations at two different sampling stations. It showcases how different the chlorophyll patterns are due to the turbulent surface water mixing from currents, rather than from winds. This graph was created using the matplotlib module and the data was parsed using the Pandas module.

I have also created a calculator application I created for my coworkers. This calculator helped us calculate how many vessels we needed to perform the analysis for a certain number of samples. The calculations were done using the math module and the GUI was created using PySimpleGUI.

There are so many more projects for me to undertake and to improve on my coding skills. It makes me very excited to be able to showcase these.